SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
B. J. Leiderman writes...
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SIMON: ...Our theme music. If you can read this cursive writing, the National Archives wants you. During the American Revolution...
SIMON: ...One of the few ways soldiers could relay their experiences to others was to write letters in cursive.
NANCY SULLIVAN: Because the pension acts were passed decades after the revolution, most of the participants had lost their paperwork. They have to prove their service, so they tell their stories.
SIMON: That's Nancy Sullivan from the National Archives. She works with the Citizen Archivist program. For the last couple of years, she and Suzanne Isaacs have been leading thousands of volunteers in an effort to digitize these pension documents. They join the cause, they pick a document, and they begin typing and tagging. Suzanne Isaacs says that the stories volunteers read can be funny or harrowing and often touching.
SUZANNE ISAACS: Anthony Gillman describes in his pension himself as a man of color. And he enlisted as a fifer, and then he was taken by the British as a prisoner. And then he was sold as a slave. He was a free man, and he was sold as a slave. And it was about a year and a half he was able to escape, and then he went on to continue to fight for the patriots. That story just really gets me.
SIMON: Nancy Sullivan recalls the incredible story of Henry Franks.
SULLIVAN: Who was captured out west by Native Americans and eventually adopted by the tribe. He was there with them for a couple of years. And then, in 1782, the Native Americans handed him over to the British in Detroit. And he went back to New York through Canada, going through Montreal and then Halifax. So he had kind of an extraordinary journey. He actually gives his Native American name. It's almost like he lived a second life.
SIMON: When Isaacs and Sullivan first began the Revolutionary War Pension Project, they thought that all this deciphering would take 20 years, at least. But with the help of an army of volunteer American keyboard patriots, they might just finish by next year - our country's 250th birthday.
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SIMON: To join the effort, visit the National Archives website.
(SOUNDBITE OF UNITED STATES OLD GUARD FIFE AND DRUM CORPS' "ROYAL AMERICAN MEDLEY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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